GIF 89a adding the possibility of defining a transparent color to the palette and of specifying the time for animations.

Characteristics of the GIF format

A GIF image may contain between 2 and 256 colors (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 or 256) among 16.8 million in its palette. Thus, due to this palette with a limited number of colors (not limited in different colors), the images obtained by this format are generally very small in size.

However, given the proprietary character of the LZW compression algorithm, all software publishers handling GIF images must pay a royalty to Unisys, the company that is the holder of the rights. This is one of the reasons why the PNG format is becoming increasingly more popular, to the detriment of the GIF format.

More information

CCM is a leading international tech website. Our content is written in collaboration with IT experts, under the direction of Jean-François Pillou, founder of CCM.net. CCM reaches more than 50 million unique visitors per month and is available in 11 languages.